The Invisible Man

The toad's internal organs surged from its mouth as Brian's mother accidentally
stepped on it. Brian had noticed ...

The toad's internal organs surged from its mouth as Brian's mother accidentally
stepped on it. Brian had noticed the toad sitting on the grass just in time
to witness its gruesome death, and stared for a few seconds before throwing up
his hands and shouting, "The universe sucks!" Brian is fond of decrying the
injustices of our chaotic environment, and perhaps no other single anecdote
supports his rantings better. There was no reason for what happened to that
toad. It just happened.

Of course, Brian's simple three-word theory is applicable everywhere, and not
just in the natural world. It was at work when Beta succumbed to VHS, despite
being the superior format. It's at work every time Fox cancels a good TV show
and replaces it with police chase videos. And it's at work almost constantly
in the music industry, a world where the Britneys and the Backstreets rule the
charts while so many true artists toil in the depths of commercial hell,
neglected by a public hungry for eye candy and a quick thrill.

While many artists have suffered similar fates, few have typified it the way
Mark Eitzel has. Put simply, Eitzel possesses one of the most impressive
oeuvres of any songwriter, living or dead. Even the perpetually clueless
Rolling Stone couldn't ignore the man's genius, naming him Songwriter
of the Year back in 1991. Despite his complete mastery of the craft, though,
he's never seen his day in the spotlight, and at this point in his career, it
seems unlikely that he ever will. The public at large isn't interested in
music this brutally honest. All the more for you and me, I suppose.

Transplanted in the early 80's from his boyhood home of Columbus, Ohio to the
San Francisco Bay Area, Eitzel fronted the tragically overlooked American Music
Club. Over the course of AMC's seven albums, Eitzel penned some of the
greatest, most heartfelt tales of degradation, struggle, and sadness in modern
music, finding his muse in dank bars, empty beds and lonely nights. When AMC
finally called it quits in 1994 after a stalled deal with Reprise, Eitzel
struck out on his own, releasing the jazzy 60 Watt Silver Lining and
the fantastic Peter Buck collaboration West on Warner before the label
left him on the curb.

The good folks at Matador picked him up for 1998's cheekily titled Caught
in a Trap and I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much Baby, a starkly
beautiful album that was almost aborted due to the difficulty of making it.
Three years later, Eitzel is still on his feet, though the weight of the
world has hardly been lifted from his shoulders. The Invisible Man is
perhaps his best solo effort yet, and nearly the equal of AMC's greatest
triumph, Everclear.

Greatness, of course, is a given where Eitzel is involved, but perhaps the
most stunning thing about The Invisible Man is the fact that, so many
years on, he's embraced electronics and emerged with an album that sounds
utterly contemporary and vital. "The Boy with the Hammer" starts things off
with deeply echoed piano and Eitzel's powerful voice singing, "When the boy
with the hammer in the bag stands up to cheer/ Then you stand up to cheer,"
as ambient washes rise like an ether fog, pushed along by a mix of skittering
beats and live percussion. Eitzel has always checked Kraftwerk and Tangerine
Dream as influences, but they've never come to the fore like this in the
past.

"Can You See?" finds Eitzel balancing his world-weariness with a newfound
trace of optimism: "You say that another man's hell could be your heaven/ And
if this is being blind and wrong give me more and more/ And let me light up
the hand and let me pull the truth through/ But if the truth won't make you
happy/ What would you do?/ The truth is that I'm happy when I'm with you."
The understated electronics burbling underneath combine with knockout horn
arrangement to wrap around Eitzel's confessions like a warm blanket.
Goosebumps ensue.

The hilarious march of "Christian Science Reading Room" is Eitzel's black
humor at its best. "I was so high/ I stood for an hour outside the Christian
Science Reading Room/ And suddenly I could not resist/ I became a Christian
Scientist/ And I studied light and I studied sound/ And every question that I
asked was suddenly profound." He goes on to convert his cat before declaring,
"I love all seven deadly sins," in the opening of "Sleep."

This is the point, where, as a reviewer, my job becomes difficult. There are
thirteen songs on this album and every single one of them is tremendous in its
own right. I could spend the rest of this review quoting lyrics and never
truly convey the power of these songs. Eitzel has a creepy way of finding all
the thoughts you have hanging next to the skeletons in your closet and
conveying them succinctly and effortlessly. So rather than participate in a
futile exercise like trying to describe how good this music is, I'll go for
the big wrap-up and hope that I can convince you that this is totally worth
listening to.

It's way too early to declare anything the Album of the Year, but I will say
that this one holds the top spot on my list by a long shot so far. Eitzel
and his small group of talented cohorts have created a textured soundtrack to
the outpourings of a broken heart that never once intrudes on the honesty of
the proceedings. Every bleep and skitter is there to serve the song.
Exploring new territory while maintaining the emotional weight of your material
is rarely a working prospect for an artist, but The Invisible Man pulls
it off nicely.

Eitzel may still be the invisible man in many respects, but as long as he
keeps translating his sorrow and suffering into batches of killer songs like
this, we as listeners get to be the lucky beneficiaries. On the drunkenly
jubilant closer, "Proclaim Your Joy," Eitzel exhorts us half-seriously that
"it is important throughout your life to proclaim your joy." And with this
album in your stereo, I think it's safe to say that you will.